When you decide it's time to implement an ERP business platform, your goal is for the transition to be efficient and smooth for your employees as well as cost-effective for your company.

But sometimes companies end up losing millions of dollars and huge amounts of time when they try to implement an ERP. Occasionally that's due to unrealistic expectations, but more often than not it's due to delays in the ERP implementation process. Here are some examples of ERP transitions that just didn't pan out.

Wayne County

Recently in Detroit, Michigan, Wayne County officials acknowledged,

they may have wasted millions paying a contractor to implement a software program now years behind schedule and budgeted to cost nearly twice what officials first planned

With their current payroll system out-of-date with not much life left, Wayne County wanted an efficient ERP to keep track of their $1.7 billion budget. Instead, they've wasted millions of dollars since 2018 trying to get an ERP up and running with no success. When talking about the project, Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch said, “Oh, it’s quite more than a bump in the road . . . It’s more like a sinkhole.”

Games Workshop

In the UK, Games Workshop is known as a fantasy model maker and table-top war games retailer. They haven't been able to update their online shopping system because of significant implementation delays to their new ERP.

Not only is the project delayed, but it's already cost Games Workshop £1.1m in the year, on top of £2.3m on a new warehousing facility.

Hewlett-Packard

Most people know HP as a technological leader selling printers and PCs nationwide, but even with all their tech experience HP's ERP implementation back in 2004 did not go as planned.

When they tried to centralize all their North American ERP systems onto one SAP system, so many things went wrong that the project ended up costing HP $160 million in order backlogs and lost revenue.

How Do You Avoid Expensive and Delayed ERP Implementation?

When you decide to unite your company under an ERP, you should spend ample time researching your options and investigating what system would work best.

Once you've picked an ERP platform that's the right fit for your company, you should schedule a project kick-off to determine their ERP implementation approach, strategy, timeline, and schedule.

Cetec ERP Makes Implementation EASY